5 Online Tools for Business

Are you using these 5 online tools to expand your sales and marketing opportunities?

1. Email newsletters

Like direct mail, this is one way of delivering a marketing message to a prospective customer. The greater your ability to tailor and personalize these messages, in combination with gaining permission (rather than spamming), the greater your positive response rate will be.

2. Webinars

Online demos or training sessions can be an effective way to explain an offering, present a topic or generate interest.

3. Video

Increase awareness of your product or service offering by creating short videos that fans, media and other interested parties can feature on their websites and blogs. Create your own video channel and feature clips on your website and popular video sharing sites such as YouTube.

4. Blogs

As communication vehicles, blogs allow you to have a public conversation with prospective customers, current customers and fans.
A blog allows visitors to comment and provide insight on your products and services instantly, and it provides an opportunity to create buzz about your stuff or company.

5. Expertise materials

White papers and case studies are popular marketing tools and serve as ways to present materials as educational rather than as blatant sales or marketing messages.
They can be used to establish your company’s credibility among media and customers.

Have another online tool that’s good for business? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Track Your Videos with TubeMogul

YouTube Insight provides basic information on which of your videos is most viewed, demographic and geographic information. You can view Insight from your Account Settings.

What it doesn’t provide is data on how many people are embedding your video and where they are embedding it.

TubeMogul is a free service that provides “a single point for deploying uploads to the top video sharing sites, and powerful analytics on who, what, and how videos are being viewed.”

I can’t tell from the website whether they can track embeds but there are a number of cool features:

* Upload to 12 sites at once
* Create charts easily that track video performance
* Aggregate your online video analytics from online video sites including Google Video, MetaCafe, MySpace, AOL, Yahoo!, Revver, YouTube ...
* Export your data to Excel

See what Tubemogul.com is all about.

I’m still looking for a way to track where your video is embedded, i.e., what other sites it appears on. If you have a tool or know how to do this, let me know. 

Presentation: BookExpo, Another Country: Creative Borders, Globalism and the Age of Collaboration

On June 13, 2008, BookExpo Canada ran a conference called “Another Country: Creative Borders, Globalism and the Age of Collaboration”. This day-long conference was devoted to discussing ideas from other places, including using the internet as a place or a method to get beyond place.

In Monique Trottier’s presentation “Websites: Investment or Expense?” attendees learned
* Advanced strategies and tactics to make your web investment pay off.
* Ways to evaluate website performance, build long-lasting relationships with your online audience, and have fun.

~~~ Monique’s Presentation Notes ~~~

Getting People to Talk About Your Stuff

Flickr.com: Sea Turtle

• You have to have something worth talking about.
• You have to use tools that allow people to easily pass on information. i.e., embed code, unique urls
• You have to plan so you can measure, measure so you can improve.
• You have to understand that online word of mouth is amplified and persistent. Embrace this channel of communication.

Why Embrace the Web?
Because things have changed:

1. The media landscape has changed.
It’s more fragmented. There are more tv channels, more radio channels, more emails, newsletters, webpages ... It’s harder to get attention.

Plus with all the media fragmentation you also have a decline in book coverage.

• Newspapers have folded the book section into other sections
• More papers draw reviews from Associated Press
• CanWest is sharing book reviews amongst its paper
• Fine Print was just canceled on Thursday.
• Book TV downgraded its coverage and let go of producers
• CBC Talking Books announced it will be canceled in the fall

2. The customer has changed.
They are more fragmented. They have more gadgets, more product choices, more news & entertainment options ... It’s harder to get their attention.

In particular because customers are busy creating content:

• blogging
• posting photos
• posting reviews
• talking to our friends with email, instant messaging, twittering

Flickr.com: swandiamondrose

This is a group of sewing bloggers who’ve posted their sewing-themed tattoos. This is passion. This is a content, communication, collaboration, creation, community.

If people are passionate about your stuff, they will talk about it. Your fans are your biggest advocates.

And, as customers:

• We are having conversations about what we like and don’t like.
• We are doing the publicity.
• We are creating the advertising.
• We are the sales force, the marketing team, the publicist.

Customers are a powerful group because they are now the handsellers of our stuff.

The clearly defined roles of publisher, bookseller, customer are now blurbed. The internet and the online tools available make it possible for customers to become the handsellers, to become the content producers, the marketers, this is the reality of the world we live in today.

Despite These Changes, Our Goals Remain the Same

1. Support an existing customer base
2. Reward good behaviour (i.e., to show appreciation for others who promote our stuff)
3. Generate repeat sales
4. Interact with customers
5. Increase brand awareness among key constituents
6. Increase our sales and marketing opportunities

What Can We Do?

1. We can turn our websites from expenses into investments.
2. We can treat our website like a top sales and marketing person.
3. We can demand and measure performance if we put the tools in place to do so.
4. We can acknowledge that the media landscape has changed and that our customers are using the internet to connect to each other, to find recommendations, to research, to discover, to share, and that if we want to get more attention, we need to understand how these tools work.
5. We can invest people, time and money into tools that help us accomplish the above goals.

1. Email newsletters

Flickr.com: alykat

Like direct mail, this is one way of delivering a marketing message to a prospective customer. The greater your ability to tailor and personalize these messages, in combination with gaining permission (rather than spamming), the greater your positive response rate will be.

2. Webinars

SeoRoi.com on Meatball Sundaes

For non-fiction (in particular, business and self-help), online demos or training sessions can be an effective way to explain an offering, present a topic or generate interest.

See the example of Seth Godin’s webinar for The Meatball Sundae and how MyVenturePad used book giveaways.

3. Video

Lab with Leo episode 132 — Monique Trottier explains her top 5 email marketing tips.

Increase awareness of titles by creating short videos that fans, media and booksellers can feature on their websites and blogs. Create your own video channel and feature clips on your website and popular video sharing sites such as YouTube.

4. Blogs

As communication vehicles, blogs allow you to have a public conversation with prospective customers, current customers and fans. A blog allows visitors to comment and provide insight on your titles instantly, and it provides an opportunity to create buzz about your titles or company.

5. Expertise materials

White papers and case studies are popular marketing tools and serve as ways to present materials as educational rather than as blatant sales or marketing messages. They can be used to establish your company or author’s credibility among media and customers.

6. Search optimization

Flickr.com: squirmelia

A properly optimized website will show up in search results for search phrases relevant to your company and titles. Prospective customers must be able to find you when they are searching for your authors, titles or subject areas. Anywhere from 60%-80% of your site traffic should come from search engines. Check your stats.

7. Website optimization

Having a site that is user friendly and easy to navigate is an important part of any online experience.

8. Pay-per-click advertising

In addition to optimizing your site for search, you can pay to appear on the results page for targeted phrases that you specify. If you are new to search advertising, pay-per-click (PPC), there are many professional services available to help, as well as detailed documentation on getting started with Google, Yahoo and MSN.

eMarketing101.ca by Alexandre Brabant is a fantastic source of information on search optimization and PPC tips and tricks.

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
Another Country: Creative Borders, Globalism and the Age of Collaboration
Presented by: Humber College and the Book and Periodical Council, Friday, June 13, 2008

This day-long conference was devoted to discussing ideas from other places, including using the internet as a place or a method to get beyond place. Another Country: Creative Borders, Globalism and the Age of Collaboration explored the differences in publishing models from country to country, the role of technology in uniting reading communities around the world, and how globalism has affected and continues to affect the content and form of books and literature. Speakers addressed the growing importance of our boundaryless cultural world and how many writers’ work defies literary boundaries. With new technologies, we have entered the age of collaboration. Is there now a blur between author and audience?

BOXCAR MARKETING is a strategy, marketing and communications firm with expertise in online marketing, web design and business strategy. We help clients move their ideas from concept to completion by developing plans to connect with their target audiences and key stakeholders.

MONIQUE TROTTIER (partner) is an internet marketing strategist, writer/editor and account manager whose projects focus on digital content, web and mixed media. Her portfolio includes web design, online promotions & publicity, electronic press releases, email newsletters, blogging, podcasting, search marketing & PPC campaigns, training and consultation. Monique spearheaded the online promotions for publisher Raincoast Books, including the online marketing for the Harry Potter books, as well as the development of the first Canadian-publisher podcast and blog. She has worked with several Canadian publishers and trade associations. Her book blog is SoMisguided.com.

More Email Marketing Tips

By the time you’re done reading this post, you’ll know more about email marketing, sending mass emails, the CAN-SPAM Act and the rules and regulations of sending commercial email. Let me explain ...

On my blog post Email Marketing Tips on Lab with Leo Gavin Doolan has posted an interesting comment that requires a follow-up blog post rather than just a comment. 

Gavin asks specifically about:

• Spam Filters (What they are and how they work).
• Email Clients - “I think most people are familiar with Outlook but they probably don’t know that people use say Lotus Notes / Thunderbird / Eudora / Apple Mail etc and the fact that these are called client programs. I know you mentioned Campaign Monitor and MailChimp which are great programs, but perhaps a little further details as to why they are so good would help the uninitiated.”
• The laws involved with sending mail. Spam issues and fines for companies that send spam etc.

All great questions!

Spam Filters
A spam filter is a program that captures emails that look like spam before they reach your in-box. Spam filters use a long list of criteria to judge whether an email is spam or not. For example, phrases like “Free”, “Buy Now”, “Enlargement”, “Price per Dose”, “Online Pharmacy”, weird repeated double-quotation marks, extra blank lines, and subject line that use exclamation mark, question mark, or all caps are assigned a certain number of points, which make up the message’s spam score. If the email spam score exceeds a certain threshold then the email is flagged as spam.

Want more details? See what MailChimp has to say about how spam filters work.

An example of a popular Spam Filter is SpamAssassin. See the SpamAssassin list of tests performed on email messages to determine a spam score.

Email Clients & The Advantage of Email Distribution Services
An email client is an application used to send, receive and store email. The most popular email clients are Outlook Express, Outlook, Eurdora, Opera Mail, Thunderbird, Lotus Notes, Mac Mail. These are typically applications that are installed on your computer.

If you are sending bulk email or mass email (i.e., email to hundreds of subscribers on a mailing list), then it’s best to find an email distribution services like Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, Campaigner, etc.

Many Internet Service Providers limit the number of emails sent at one time from an email client. This is to combat spam. Even though your email client will allow you to create a large email list, your ISP will block the sending of that list and you’ll receive an error, “too many recipients specified”.

With most ISPs, you can request a business account that will allow you to send out mass email. You may be charged an extra fee. The advantage to paying a third party email distribution service is that you get reporting on your open and bounce rates, you can view links clicked on by subscribers and see forwarding to a friend numbers; plus your unsubscribe and subscribe functions are handled automatically. No more manually breaking up lists and wasting time hunting for addresses of those wishing to change their email address or unsubscribe.

In addition, a company dedicated to providing mass email distribution services is going to pay a lot of attention of ensuring that the users of the system are CAN-SPAM compliant and they are going to ensure they are whitelisted with other ISPs, meaning the ISP will recognize that the email from this service has a good reputation.

My recommendation, if you wish to ensure a higher deliverability rate, greater intelligence about what subscribers do with your email and less manual labour, is to go with a third party email distribution service.

Email Deliverability Education

Where can you find out more about the rules and regulations of email marketing?

Campaigner: Email Marketing offers a page with information on compliance, deliverability and reputation. They link to a number of articles on the importance of whitelistng, the role of reputation, the CAN-SPAM Act, and best practices in email marketing.

Also check out the links below to the CAN-SPAM Act.

CAN-SPAM Act
The CAN-SPAM Act became effective in January 2004 and it establishes the requirements for commercial email and spells out the penalties for non-compliance with the Act.

The Law’s main provisions are listed on the US Federal Trade Commission website. The provisions cover things like non-deceptive subject lines, clear From Sender information and easy opt-out functionality. Most important is that each violation of the provisions is subject to fines of up to $11,000.

Because spam continues to hurt the reputation of legitimate email senders, the Email Sender and Provider Coalition (ESPC) was formed. The ESPC website has lots of information and a testing tool to check if your email is compliant.

Each of these sites offers detailed information on the rules and regulations surrounding mass email sending. Plus good email distribution service companies provide articles, FAQs and blog posts to help email senders stay up to date. For example, Campaign Monitor recently posted about the 2008 email design guidelines. See the link below.

2008 Email Design Guidelines
Email Design Guidelines and Tips from Campaign Monitor

UPDATE July 4

Mequoda Daily Blog has a great list of all the subject lines that trigger spam filters.